


A Fighting Chance

by abusemesoftly



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: OCD, Obsessive Behavior, Obsessive-Compulsive, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Panic Attacks, Spencer Reid has ocd, Tobias Hankel - Freeform, Very short description of graphic ness in ending notes, Working through my own issues, description of ocd, trigger warning, trigger warning ocd, trigger warning panic attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 18:22:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9670595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abusemesoftly/pseuds/abusemesoftly
Summary: Spencer has let his coping mechanism morph into what his therapist had been worried about. When he realizes that it has gotten bad, it might be to late.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Alright guys, so this is another case of me taking my shit out on my favorite characters, and Spence is my favorite for mental health stuff, so here i am! In case you didn't read the tags, this describes ocd, specifically my ocd really bad so you have been warned! Let's get started!

After the events of Tobias Hankel, there was about a year of uncertainty about whether or not Spencer would ever be able to return to his normal state. After collecting his own one year chip from a meeting he walked home rubbing it in his hand enjoying the cool air around him. It wasn’t quite cold enough for a heavy jacket, but his thick sweater seemed to be just what he needed to take the edge off the brisk wind of the night. He got home and slept more peaceful then he had in a long time.

The next day started off just fine and Spencer hadn’t even noticed the patterns he was making. That was knew to him. Part of the way he coped with everything was with patterns, the mathematical, and analytical part of him loved the repetition and infinity-ness of it all. He remembered a brief moment when his therapist was worried about him relying on it as much as he did because of his history with OCD, but the thought of losing his best coping mechanism sent him into a panic attack right on her couch. They quickly decided that they would continue to use it, but they would monitor it closely for signs of it going too far.

They had sense moved on and almost forgot about it entirely, mostly focusing now on whatever issue had come up in the last two weeks, and the progress that he had made seeing that he was now only seeing her once every two weeks instead of every other day. Of course, the patterns had wormed their way into his life in every way possible and he hadn’t noticed it. His team members did, but they always knew Spencer had some sort of OCD, so they didn’t put too much thought to it. It started off in small things, like he always locked his phone three times, unknowingly, just to check that he had actually locked it, even though the screen was clearly black.

It then, became a habit to nod his head to the beat of everything, just a steady continuous beat. Slow, and casual, and not a major nod, just like a slow time keeper, always dipping his head a fraction of an inch ever few seconds. That would come and go, and would get worse every time he heard a song, it would become the base line of the beat in the song, and then he would end up nodding it to the beat of that same song for the rest of the day. Worse was when he heard a child’s song, like _Twinkle Twinkle Little Star_ , or certain classical pieces often associated with children’s programs. Those were the worst because he would not only bob his head but he would tap along as well.

The tapping was becoming the teams most dreaded habit of all. It was more constant than the bobbing. It would be the same beat or the same tune or the same rhythm to everything he did. Tapping, moving his legs, moving his head, how he chewed his food, how he could take a breath. He often caught himself moments away from gasping for air, or hyperventilating because he had started only breathing with the tune he was stuck on.

Spencer of course had no idea about it, not at first at least. He wouldn’t understand why he was out of breath, or why he had stopped chewing until he had sat there for a moment, food just in his mouth, the action causing a sort of reset for his brain and the tune would be gone. Sometimes for the rest of the day, sometimes just for a split second. It didn’t hit him that there was something wrong and that it might have gotten out of hand until they had been on a case.

Sitting in the police station in some city in Wyoming Spencer had caught tune of the same classical piece he was often stuck on. It was a common piece in children’s programs and he had gone to visit the family where it had played on the t.v., he hadn’t wanted to pay any attention to it at all but the melody stuck in his head. He had been writing on the white board in front of everyone, moving his hand to the beat in his head, explaining something about…something when something had made a noise and he stopped writing. But the beat continued in his head. But now it was off…he couldn’t write like this, it was wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Hotch had asked him what happened when he noticed the boy had stopped writing on the board but was looking upset down at the floor, moving his head and his lips slightly as he seemed to be mouthing something.

He had to get back to where he was. Finally, the repetitive beat had come back around and he slowed it down to be able to write again, and on cue, he started moving and continued to write what he had started minutes ago, ending the sentence the dot seemed to prove as a stopping point for the music in his head as well as he turned to look at the other members of his team. They were all staring at him instead of what he had just written.

“What just happened kid?” Morgan asked not skipping a beat, no pun intended.

“I don’t know…” He answered honestly looking down to hopefully look in at himself and figure out what had just happened. Sense that moment, when he realized he had stopped himself because of a beat he started noticing it. Noticing the tapping. Noticing the bobbing. Noticing the humming. Noticing the beat. Noticing the tapping. Noticing the bobbing. Noticing the humming. Noticing the beat. Noticing the tapping. Noticing the bobbing. Noticing the humming. Noticing the beat.

Now that he was more self-aware of the problem he started to keep a check on it. He would stop himself from following a beat by listening to an audio book, or another song. Something to distract himself from the beat stuck on repeat in his head. When he went to tap, he picked up clay, or something else for his hands to do to keep busy. When he went to check his phone, he made himself set it face down away from him so he could see it, and know that it was safe. For a while he was able to control it for the most part. It would act up occasionally, when he was stressed, or after he had just finished being stressed like after a hard case. Those times were getting harder and harder to stop himself from giving in to.

It started getting physical one night he was off and was at home just relaxing. There was nothing really for him to have been stressed about, so there was no real reason for him to be having a bad night, especially with the tapping. Suddenly there was an itch on his foot that he thought nothing about. Reaching down he scratched it as he read. The book was good, it really was, and it seemed to be distracting him well enough. He hadn’t thought about tapping in a while now. He was proud. That is, until he suddenly winced looking down to the sharp pain coming from his foot, seeing his fingers starting to turn a brown red color from dried and currently drying blood, and the scab on his foot that he had created. He had scratched a spot on his foot until he pulled skin off. He hadn’t even realized it until he was in pain. It was then he decided he should make an appointment with his therapist again.

At this point he had gone to seeing her once a month, just for check up’s. Setting an appointment for two weeks from now, the earliest he could get in, without it being an emergency, and still two weeks before his next appointment was planned he sighed feeling a little bit deflated. He had been doing so good, and now he was making appointments again. He just reminded himself that it was a lifelong journey and went to clean up his hand and foot. Even after it was cleaned and bandage Spencer caught himself scratching at the band-aid. Wanting to scratch, wanting to itch an itch that wasn’t there. Then he started doing it on his arm, then another arm, and suddenly, within a few days he was on the edge of his seat at his desk, seconds away from the second worst meltdown he had ever had at the BAU office.

His appointment was six days from now, and it might as well had been for a year from now, that’s how much it seemed to comfort him. He was bouncing his foot, happing his finger as he wrote with his other hand, having quickly taught himself how to be ambidextrous because he much more preferred using his dominate hand to tap, having to stop every few words to scratch anyway he was getting no work done. Almost half of what Morgan was getting done. Morgan! He growled at himself when he looked down and noticed that once again he had pulled skin up off his hand that was still tapping. He pushed his chair back and stomped his way to the bathroom to wash his hands. Nothing had worked all day. He couldn’t get the beat out of his head. It was ruining his day, hell it was ruining his life! The same beat as it usually was, he hissed as he had to stop in his tracks, unaware of Morgan walking after him. He was bobbing his head, harder now, trying to finish out the beat to get back to where he was so he could continue walking.

“Hey, kid what’s going on, you were kind of bugging out back there.” He said grabbing his arm and turning him, moving him out of his step sequence again, which meant the beat was messed up again.

“You’re messing it up!” He screamed suddenly. He pulled his arm away from Morgan, turning to be back exactly where he was before he, with angry tears in his eyes, out loud this time, tapped his fingers against an imaginary desk, as he ended the beat, started it again, letting a few tears fall, not having the time to stop and wipe them away. Eventually, he started walking again, towards the bathroom only a few feet away, now that he was on track. Once he got in the room the tiled floors and walls seemed to laugh at him. He quickly backed up, never having noticed the tile. He had recently stopped going near tile. He hadn’t been in his bathroom for more than it took to use the restroom, or take a quick five-minute shower here and there in weeks. He hated the tile. It was awful, worse than the beats. He fell back, tripping over his shoes as he landed on the floor of the hallway. Morgan, and some of the others just standing and staring as their genius sat and cried. Watched him curl in on himself. Watched him tap as he cried, unable to stop himself from the beats. Watched as he rocked himself back and forth, only making him cry more.

Reaching up he ran his hands through his hair and grabbed a hold and pulled. Hard. That was most rare. He had only done it a few other times. The first time he freaked out because of the tile, the time right before he called his therapist, and now. He didn’t remember much of what happened after that, he just remembered pulling on his hair as hard as he could, not enough to pull chucks out, but more of a dull ache against his skull, something about the repetitive tug was what he needed.

It was also all the team needed to intervene. JJ was not about to watch her baby brother pull his own hair out when he was already in the middle of a very severe panic attack. She was the first one to move from the small group that had somewhat surrounded him. She grabbed his arms and forcing his hands away from his head, then pulled his other arm in to wrap around his sides and hold there so he couldn’t tap either. This was by far the worst she had ever seen the boy. Even in the middle of his detox, when he would snap at everyone, this…this was worse. She felt so completely useless, there was nothing she could do to comfort the boy, only hold on and hope he hadn’t hurt himself too bad. Rossi was next, moving to sit behind the young man, and take JJ’s place so she could move around the front and try to talk to Spencer. Telling him her name and reminding him who she was, and that she wouldn’t hurt him she told him he couldn’t tap and he couldn’t pull. He couldn’t scratch and he couldn’t rock. It was as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders and pushed directly into his gut.

Morgan had sense called Hotch down, and explained what happened. With Spencer finally calming down, working on breathing with Emily, he could have his arms back from Rossi, who just slowly rubbed his back. Aaron sighed as he walked over pinching the bridge of his nose. He knelt beside the agents and looked at Spencer. They appeared to have a telepathic conversation. Aaron was telling him he had to take time off. Spencer knew he needed it too, he was going to set up an emergency meeting with his therapist, and possibly take some time off and think about what he wanted to do. He didn’t know if that meant checking himself into a ward, to be watched until he could get over the clearly now crippling OCD, or if he would try some knew medication, who knows, maybe he would even attempt to meditate for once in his life. All he knew was that this was now the main problem and he needed help.

**Author's Note:**

> Alright guys, well that was that! Sorry about how weird it might be, I was having another really bad night, and I realized this when I found myself sitting on the kitchen floor, (because the chairs didn’t feel right.) tugging on my own hair in the almost dark and silence. And realized that I had been doing so for two hours. So, I decided to come in here and write this out sense it seemed to be the easiest way for me to get my feelings out. All of the things I had spencer experience was something that I have personally gone through, I suffer from OCD myself, specifically the picking one, which is why the scratching is such a big issue for me, and it has sense morphed into hair pulling. (not pulling out actually, because I know that is its own thing but just pulling on it. Idk, it’s weird.) My major issue that I didn’t include here because I just couldn’t see Spencer having it was picking my lips. For as long as I can remember have pulled the skin off my lips until they are literally red and bleeding profusely, and my nails feel grainy against bloody muscle. It’s a problem. ANYWAY, thanks for reading, hopefully this helps instead of triggers you, maybe you wanted to get more into the mind of an ocd person, maybe you wanted to be like me and get the ocd urge out of the way, and you used a character instead of yourself, I don’t know! Thanks again guys, as always you can follow me on here or tumblr @iwantyourbloodonmylips and I would love to hear from you guys, hear what you think, if you have any questions, comments, prompts just let me know!!!


End file.
